Monday, December 23, 2013

Ah,
Christmas memories circa 2013. Wearing the stockings that should be
hanging in front of the fireplace. Using a credit card to chip away the
ice on the INSIDE of my windshield. Shooing the polar bears out of my
yard. Belting out Christmas carols through gritted teeth. Every nerve
ending clenching as I crunch through icy snow to pick up the mail.

No
brown, lukewarm tidings of joy this year. Welcome to a Pioneer
Christmas: Fort Snelling with flush toilets and Netflix. A subtle (yet
blunt) reminder that we all live in a distant suburb of Winnipeg.

The
approach of slightly milder air sets off another burst of powder today;
2-4 inches of fluff likely this afternoon & tonight. Get your
last-last minute shopping done early.

This is as cold as it gets
looking out 1-2 weeks; 20s will feel absurdly good Christmas Day -
luxurious 30s Saturday before chilling down again early next week.
There's every indication we'll be flirting with zero into the first week
of 2014.

I see hints of a thaw mid-January, but a cold bias
lingers as far ahead as I care to look.<p>I'm grateful for an
amazing family, great friends and thoughtful readers.

A very merry Christmas is predicted for you & yours.

Severe Cool.
Here are the projected 6 AM temperatures this morning, courtesy of
NOAA's NAM model. The urban heat island will keep the downtowns and
close-in suburbs 5-8F warmer than the outlying suburbs, but I ask again:
is it possible to feel colder than numb? Map: Ham Weather.

Next Snow Burst.
When it's this cold the flakes are small, air puffing up snowfall like
the feathers in a down comforter. I expect fairly rapid accumulation of
snow this afternoon and evening, slowly tapering late tonight. By then,
2-4" for much of Minnesota and Wisconsin, pushing across the Great Lakes
into northern New England. 84-hour NAM Future Radar courtesy of NOAA
and Ham Weather.

Probably Plowable.
With a rain:snow ration closer to 1:20 and .20" liquid expected I could
easily see some 4" amounts of Minnesota powder by tonight. Roads will
get icier as the day goes on. Map: Ham Weather.

Waterfall Of Hurt.
Those blue/aqua temperatures pushing into the Upper Mississippi Valley
show subzero chill pushing south of the border via Canadian Air Mail,
brushing the Great Lakes before retreating north. Temperatures moderate
by the end of the week. 84-hour 2-meter temperature outlook: NOAA and
Ham Weather.

No Major Break In The Pattern.
Temperatures continue to trend well below average through at least the
first week of 2014, the only short-term shot at freezing coming
Saturday. January came early - maybe February will too. Temperature
meteogram: Weatherspark.

Toronto Hit By Ice Storm, Hundreds Of Thousands Without Power.Treehugger has an update on an extreme ice event; here's the intro: "The second climate disaster of the year hit Toronto, Canada (here was the first)
yesterday as an ice storm took down thousands of trees and power lines,
leaving roads blocked and 300,000 customers and up to a million people
without power in freezing weather. The head of the local power utility
says that it is the worst they have ever seen..."

Photo credit above: CC BY 2.0 Lloyd Alter.

No Cable? No Problem. More Residents Cut The Cord, Opt For Streaming TV.
I have DirecTV, Mediacom cable, as well as Apple TV and Roku, and I
find I too am watching more streaming television via WiFi. How did I
ever get by without Netflix? Here's a clip from The St. Cloud Times: "...Wall
Street media analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson recently
released a report that shows cable operators lost 687,000 subscribers
nationally during the third quarter of this year — a much steeper
decline than in 2011-12. The cable industry still controls about 55
percent of the pay-TV market in the United States, according to an SNL
Kagan report, down from 65 percent in 2006. Like many of the contingent
known as cord cutters, the Jonaks’ entertainment now comes online..."

Photo credit above: "Joe
and Susie Jonak and their children Lily, 3, and Aidan, 5, use tablets,
computers, and their BluRay player to stream video in their home Dec.
11. The family, like many others, got rid of cable or satellite
television to stream content on the internet and Netflix." / Jason Wachter, jwachter@stcloudtimes.com.

The 100 Most Astonishing Images Of 2013. Gizmodo has an eye-popping, mind-boggling collection of photos from 2013; definitely worth a look: "We
post tons of great images on Gizmodo, from space to science to art to
design. Here's a treasure trove of our very favorites that proves that
2013 was, if nothing else, eye-catching."

Image credit above: massive hurricane on Saturday, via NASA.

12 Sexiest Ideas For Wasting Crazy Amounts Of Energy At Christmastime. With tongue implanted firmly in cheek, the Energy Blog at seattlepi.com has a few ideas; here's an excerpt: "..There are so many easy and amazing ways to enhance energy waste around the house during the holidays. How many can you find? Get the whole family to search together and make a game of it! Here are twelve ideas to get you started:1. String all your old lights on the house and in the yard, then leave them on 24/7.

One-Off Fat Trike Attempts World Record Antarctic Trip.
You think THIS is cold? This is Club Med compared to Antarctica, and
one very ambitous biker. Good grief, I have nightmares that start out
like this. Gizmag has more details: "Last
winter, polar explorer Eric Larsen attempted to become the first person
to cycle to the South Pole. Continually stymied by deep, unrideable
snow, Larsen fell behind schedule and was forced to abandon the attempt.
This year, several others are taking up the challenge. Thirty-five
year-old British adventurer Maria Leijerstam is hoping the ticket to
success is a fat-tired recumbent trike built to task..."

Climate Stories...

"...Despite
new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas,
37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is
declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per
year:

"We need new production equal to a new
Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply... New
discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down
on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every
year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields,
raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at
4.1% p.a. [per annum]."

- from a post at The Guardian, details below. Image above: Clean Technica.Solar Activity Is Not A Key Contributor To Climate Change: Study. International Business Times has the story - here's an excerpt: "Variations
in heat from the sun have not strongly influenced climate change,
according to a new study conducted by scientists at the University of
Edinburgh, which instead points the finger at volcanic activity and
greenhouse gases for the planet's ever-changing climate patterns. The
findings of the study, published
in Nature GeoScience on Sunday, have overturned a widely-held
scientific concept that long-lasting periods of warm and cold weather in
the past might have been caused by periodic fluctuations in solar
activity. The researchers examined causes of climate change in Earth’s
northern hemisphere over the past 1,000 years and found that until the
year 1800, the key driver of periodic changes in climate was volcanic
activity..."

Photo credit above: "Solar
flare on the sun. Climate change has not been strongly influenced by
variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows." NASA/SDO/AIA.

Annual Audubon Bird Count Is A Barometer For Climate Change. The Journal News has an interesting article and video; here's an excerpt: "...A
2009 report showed more than half the bird species seen during the
first weeks of the winter season in North America had moved northward
between 1966 and 2005. Not all that movement was a response to climate
change, Audubon acknowledged, but the correlation between shifting
ranges and increasing winter temperatures can’t be ignored. The new
report, due out early next year, will be “powerful,” Audubon New York’s
executive director Erin Crotty told The Journal News. “We’ll know which
birds are threatened by climate change. It’s going to add urgency and
clarity to our work,” Crotty said..."

Image credit above: "Counting
birds at Christmas: Volunteers this holiday season are tallying birds
as part of Audubon's 114th annual Christmas Bird Count, which helps
scientists understand how birds are responding to various pressures,
including climate change." (Michael Risinint/The Journal News).

Global Warming Will Intensify Drought, Says New Study.
Not "trigger" drought, but when natural droughts do set in, make them
more intense - faster; amplifying and potentially prolong their effects.
Here's a summary of an interesting story at The Guardian: "...Overall, the study concludes,

"Increased
heating from global warming may not cause droughts but it is expected
that when droughts occur they are likely to set in quicker and be more
intense."

In the end, climate change is
important because it affects our lives, our societies, and our
economies; impacts that are occurring because of extreme weather. It is
critical to be able to accurately assess the trends in observed extreme
weather so we can better plan our mitigation and adaptation strategies.
The old adage of "you don't know where you are going unless you know
where you've been" seems to apply pretty well here..."

Photo credit above: "A new study finds that global warming will probably cause droughts to set in quicker and be more intense." Photograph: David Gray/REUTERS.

Faux Pause: Climate Contrarians Lose Favorite Talking Point. Here's a clip from climate scientist Greg Laden at scienceblogs.com: "...To
any objective observer, the Earth is now a world warmed. The decade
2001–2010 was the hottest decade on record, and every single month since
March 1985 has been warmer than the 20th century average. The present
year promises to be the sixth warmest year on record. Already this year,
our fellow Americans out West have been confronted by record breaking
wildfire, extreme drought, and devastating floods. All this in addition
to the ongoing pine beetle epidemic ravaging our forests. All of these
“natural” disasters are exactly what climate scientists expect from a
world warmed by human emissions. Despite all these facts, the
contrarians have been heavily (and somewhat successfully) asserting that
the world isn’t warming, that global warming has paused..."

About Me

Welcome to my weather blog. Every day I sift through hundreds of stories, maps, graphics and meteorological web sites, trying to capture some of the most interesting weather nuggets, the stories behind the forecast. I'll link to stories and share some of the web sites I use.
I'm still passionate about the weather, have been ever since Tropical Storm Agnes flooded my home in Lancaster, PA in 1972. I've started 5 weather-related companies. "EarthWatch" created the world's first 3-D weather graphics for TV stations - Steven Spielberg used our software in "Jurassic Park" and "Twister". My last company, "Digital Cyclone", personalized weather for cell phones. "My-Cast" was launched in 2001 and is still going strong on iPhone, Android and Blackberry. I sold DCI to Garmin in 2007 so I could focus on my latest venture: WeatherNation.
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Twitter name: pdouglasweather